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December 21, 2005

LINCOLN, Neb. --This fish didn't have a chance. A rainbow trout pulled out of Holmes Lake last weekend had double the chance to get hooked: It had two mouths.

Clarence Olberding, 57, wasn't just telling a fisherman's fib when he called over another angler to look at the two-mouthed trout. It weighed in at about a pound.

"I reached down and grabbed it to take the hook out, and that's when I noticed that the hook was in the upper mouth and there was another jaw protruding out below," said Olberding.

He said in his 40 years of fishing, he's never seen anything like it.

Don Gabelhouse, head of the fisheries division of the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, said a two-mouthed fish was new to him, too.

"It's probably a genetic deformity," he said. "I don't think there's anything wrong with it."

The second mouth didn't appear to be functional, Olberding said. He has plans for the fish, which don't included mounting.

"I'm going to smoke it up and eat it," he said.